Keith Stewart’s remarkable adventures usually occur near his hometown of Hyden in the hills of southeastern Kentucky, although he can be found aimlessly wandering the streets of nearby Lexington at any given moment. Before he shed his corporate casing, he worked as a certified public accountant for a multi-national company. He now enjoys less stressful work with much less pay, and blogs and writes and stuff. Oh, and he is as happy as a clam.

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Thursday, August 23, 2012

My First Novel!

The years I worked in corporate accounting were mostly spent trying to force my round self into a very square hole. I did my job, sometimes fairly well, and spent most of my free time obsessing over office politics, my upcoming performance review, answering asinine emails from my bosses, and drinking. When I was fired from my last job, I finally made myself stop the madness. I decided even if I had to work for minimum wage, I was not ever going back to a windowless cubicle to stare at spreadsheets and have conference calls about the best way to fool our company shareholders into believing we were profitable and had sound management--it was a very "Scarlett O'Hara As God As My Witness" moment, you should have been there.

So began my journey into my true passion, writing, and also my new job as a minimum wage earning pharmacy technician. I have been working the past two or three years at improving my writing skills, deciding which way I wanted to go with my work, and trying to better myself in hopes of getting published. I also can count pills in a thirty, sixty, or ninety count at remarkable speeds.

It wasn't until a few weeks ago that I remembered I had already
authored several entire books. These books were written when I was
around eight years old. Thankfully, my mother loves me and kept a few of
my better pieces of work in one of my Star Wars folders. I found it in a
drawer at my parent's house. It is no coincidence that the folder has
the great Obi-Wan Kenobi on it. He was a master Jedi trainer, and I was
in training to be a Jedi writer. Even though my stupid sister, Eugenia,
and stupid sister-cousin, Tracy, defiled Obi-Wan, the magic of his
presence is still felt.

I want to share with you, my lovelies, my first novel that my mother so painstakingly preserved. I think you will find, as I did, the great potential and superior knowledge of what the public wants in a good story I had even as a mere boy in the 1970's. It is amazing I waited so long to write again!

That's right. The name of my first novel was Super Person. Even as an eight-year old child in 1978, I was politically correct.

Laying the groundwork, building the characters. You know, writer stuff.

Oh yeah, building the tension. Three people were not happy, and who was one of them? A vampire. That's right, Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer, I started the vampire craze, not you. Suck it.

Also note that I had originally spelled "were" as "where." I made the mistake of letting one of the local librarians, Mrs. Hood, read my book. She had the nerve to correct my errors! I was appalled then, and I am appalled now.

Maybe my life in corporate accounting is not all that surprising as I decided that the devil, witch, and vampire would have meeting to discuss their unhappiness.

Obviously, the devil is the ringleader of this gang of misfits. I like the splash of color I give to his word bubble, although I must have seen I didn't have room to write "skeleton" in the bubble so I just abbreviated with "sc," which I believe is the medical abbreviation for the word "skeleton."

Damn straight it was some skeleton. Seriously, look at that thing. I am scared.

Again showing my finger on the pulse of the coming fads in this country by spelling her name funky. I didn't use the traditional "Linda." Oh no, I went with "Lynda." This opened the floodgates in the late 1970's and 80's for names like "Brandi," "Stephfannie," and "Tawd." Looking back, I see an apology is needed. My bad.

I love Lynda's hair in this drawing. I think it is very realistic to the big haired women I grew up around, and her walk says she is confident and jaunty.

The action and tension at this point in the novel is overwhelming. Props to Superman for allowing me to use his tag line here.

This is the climax of the book and it is riveting. When you read "POW," you actually feel Super Person hitting that skeleton.

Introducing a new character on the final two pages of the book is a twist that most authors are afraid to try, but not me. By bringing in an angel of death to kill the witch , the reader is stunned.

I also make sure this is a true page turner by leaving the reader hanging with the word "and." Genius.

At the end of the book, we discover that the angel of death also killed the vampire and devil. Lynda has apparently been made a princess, and the angel has converted herself back to a Christmas angel. You can see the cape of Super Person as he or she flies off to his or her next adventure.